We have to decide as a league whether to join the English Chess Federation (ECF) so we can have our league games graded nationally or whether to break away and operate as a separate body and use our own NECL grade instead.

This decision needs to be taken before anything else can be decided for next season and might just have an impact on which clubs remain part of the NECL. We will hold a special LCM on Thursday 23rd August 2012 at Chelmsford’s venue (7.45 start). Every club and league official is entitled to one vote and a straight majority will decide.

1) One way to show a specific game position, either as part of an annotation for a game or to present a chess puzzle, is to simply insert your FEN text between square brackets as described here. The example below, uses the text string,
r2qk2r/ppp1bppp/3p4/4n2n/2B1P1b1/2NPBN2/PPP3PP/R2Q1RK1 !w !- !- !0 !1
The string has to be exactly right to be picked up by the ChessOnline plugin and show the board in your post. If you only see a text string instead of a diagram when you preview your post, double check that you have entered a valid string (and no spaces between bracket and string!).

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N.B. ChessOnline seems to need the above ‘!’ characters to work. Another quirk, depending on users window magnification, might cause the right-side row numbers to display ‘under’ the table instead of alongside. It has been 7 years since the last available update, so you may prefer to use an alternative viewer for new diagrams (and edit tags for existing diagrams?).

2) The Chess Tempo Viewer can also demonstrate a board position (or complete game) using ctpgn tags as described here and shown below for the same position.

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Display an animated game

To place an animated graphic of a full game into your post you have a choice of tools.
1) You can insert the pgn text string for the game between pgn tags as described here and shown in the example below which uses the ‘Embed Chessboard’ plugin.
Your readers can single-step through the moves, or click the ‘+’ button for auto-play.

your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard; alternatively your wordpress theme might suppress the html iframe tag from articles or excerpts

2) The ChessOnline tool has been extended to also deal with pgn.
It was described as experimental, but seemed workable, and is shown in the example below. (though presently lacking a few features such as initialising the display to a specific move and no autoplay). Similar to above but use copgn instead of pgn in your tags.(shown here for the same game).

This submission is to test creation of posts in author role.
You can save texts as draft until ready to publish.
You can also edit or delete your published posts.
Start by selecting ‘Posts’-> ‘Add New’ from your dashboard.
Be sure to select the most appropriate category before publishing!

On the 1st September 2012, changes will occur in the ECF Membership Scheme and Game Fee, These changes were touched upon at the AGM. They will affect us all and are described here.

What impact will possible league policies have on this matter?
Will increased costs reduce club memberships? Will clubs reduce league participation?
Will membership be a requirement of the league, or will clubs administer game fees?
What value do your club members place on having an ECF authenticated grade?
Is a break-away league viable? Would ECF members play in ‘locally-graded’ matches?
Would a 2-tier league with membership required only for div 1 players be a viable compromise? Many questions have been raised with no obvious answers.

What are your views? Has your club decided which policies to support?
What league policies would you and your club like to see?
Posting your comments here may influence the options being considered..
It may also assist Robin to prepare an options document for presenting to the LCM.

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